EMES Conferences Selected Papers a Study on the Ethical Consumption
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
Social enterprise for sustainable societies LLN, 3-6 July 2017 ECSP-6EMES-10 A Study on the Ethical Consumption Gap. -The possibility of conversion of ethical purchase intention into behavior- Yoobin Lee Yena Lee Sanghoon Lee South Korea, July 2017 EMES Conferences selected papers 2017 A Study on the Ethical Consumption Gap -The possibility of conversion of ethical purchase intention into behavior - Yoobin Lee (Master Student, Sungkonghoe University) Yena Lee (Doctoral Student, Sungkonghoe University) Sanghoon Lee (Professor, Sungkonghoe University) Abstract The concept of ethical consumption covers broad area and includes various terms such as environmental, health, and well-being. Consumer cooperatives in Korea (hereafter CCK) have been strongly oriented toward pursuing ethical consumption such as labor/worker’s rights, fair price, and safe goods, etc. However, purchasing behavior of CCK members is discordant with their recognition for core value of CCK. In the previous researches, such phenomenon is presented as "Ethical Consumption Gap," "Ethical Purchase Attitude Gap," or "Ethical Consumer Paradox." According to these studies, price, lack of information, reliability of information, convenience, ethical attitude and recognition are found to be the factors generating ethical consumption gap. However, these studies have limitations in terms of measuring the intention of purchase, not actual behavior. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to find out the gap between ethical purchasing behavior and the purchase intention of ethical products, and to find out the point to resolve or reduce purchasing gap. We conducted 20 in-depth interviews with the participants who well know about or buy eco- friendly/organic products. The interviews were analyzed in two steps using the GDM(Grounded Delphi Method) method, which combines the Grounded Theory and Delphi. This study will increase more understanding for ethical consumer behavior and provide marketing managers with strategic implication for how to reduce ethical purchasing gaps in the future. 1. Introduction Over the past decade, ethical consumerism has been extended to a wide range from cultural to social aspects (Carrigan & Attalla, 2001; Crane et al., 2004; Shaw et al., 2000). Reflecting this trend, ethical consumers have become new market segmentation (Crowe & Simon, 2001; Hayes et al., 2007). Especially, consumer Cooperatives of Korea (CCK) pursuing ethical consumption has grown rapidly. CCK has played an important role to provide environment-friendly organic products. During the past three decades, they gradually expand their business with various ethical products from other co- operatives, fair trade organizations and social enterprises. There are four representative associations of CCK, each named Hansalim, iCOOP, Dure-coop, and Happycoop. The total number of members is about 86 million households, with an annual turnover of 800 billion won (Son et al., 2015). Eco-friendly agricultural products market in Korea, including consumer cooperatives, is expected to be 7,047.49 billion won in 2020, which is equivalent to 20% of the total agricultural market (Kim et al., 2013). Compared with global organic market, organic market in Korea is still at an early stage1, but it has been expected that there would be a high possibility of rapid growth. It is because the boundary of ethical market is thought to be able to go beyond organic market, including transportation, donation, leisure, and housing, etc. For example, Freestone and McGoldrick (2008) pointed out that ethical shopping carts can be used in a variety of areas ranging from food safety and health to daily supplies, cosmetics, energy, housing, transportation, donation, leisure. However, the growth rate of ethical market has slowed down, though (Hamm & Gronefeld, 2004). The 1 According to KOTRA's April 2015 Trend Report, the global market size grew to $ 88.1 billion in 2015, compared with $ 59.3 billion in 2010. reasons of decreasing growth rate are pointed out, and the phenomenon called “attitude-behavior gap” is one of them. This means that although the market share of ethical product is quite big and awareness of ethical product is increasing, the observed real purchase rate of ethical products is behind the level (Carrigan & Attalla 2001; Roberts 1996; Vermeir & Verbeke 2006). One of the examples of attitude-behavior gap is “30:3 syndrome” which means a phenomenon that 30% of consumers have an intention to buy ethical goods, but only 3% of consumers actually buy the ethical goods (Crowe & Simon, 2001). Studies on ethical consumption gap have been gradually attracting attention since 2000s. These studies based on ethical consumerism were conducted using three theoretical models, such as decision making structure, TPB (Theory of planned behavior), and cognitive model (Fukukawa, 2003). However, These studies were criticized for disregarding the empirical research, and some social psychologists argues that purchase intention directly relate to actual purchasing behavior (Ajzen et el., 2004; Bagozzi, 2000; Carrington et al., 2010; Morwitz et al., 1993; Young et al., 2010). The purpose of this study is to find out the factors that affect ethical consumption gap, andthe conversion level of each gap factor which is the level of gap factor that does not act as a gap, focusing on the part of purchasing behavior during the entire ethical consumption decision-making process. Through in-depth interviews with consumers who buy eco-friendly or organic products, we investigate the factors generating purchasing gap and examine the levels that can be converted into real purchasing behavior. 2. Theoretical background 2.1. Ethical consumption gap As the ethical consumption is increasingly important, the necessity of empirical research on ethical consumption gap is also increasing because that can provide understanding about real purchasing of ethical consumer. However, the definition of ethical consumption gap is not clear yet. Cone / Roper reports(1999) explained that ‘the gap between attitude and purchasing behavior’ is a phenomenon that actual purchasing rate of consumers who react to social responsibility is only 20%, and Roberts (1996) used the term ‘attitude gap’ in his research. Young et al.(2010) used the expression “value/action gap”. Vermeir and Verbeke(2006) defines an "attitude-behavioral intention gap" as a gap between a sustainable food purchasing behavior and a preferred attitude for sustainable behavior, and Belk et al.(2005) suggested the concept of "intention-behaviors gap". Carrington et al.(2010) used the expression of ‘the gap between the ethical purchase intentions and actual buying behavior’. In this way, different expressions are used for explaining the phenomena that behaviors do not always correspond to attitudes and intentions. Therefore, a general definition of ethical consumption gap is necessary. In this study, we define ethical consumption gap as ‘the phenomenon that attitude toward ethical consumption does not lead to actual purchasing behavior in consumer’s ethical consumption decision-making process including recognition, attitude, intention, real purchasing behavior’. Focusing on the factors generating purchasing gap is meaningful to understand attitude and purchasing behavior more specifically by subdividing the whole ethical consumption decision making process. The factors of ethical consumption gap found in the previous researches are; high price, relatively low quality, low reliability and/or the lack of information, lack of accessibility, CSR(corporate social responsibility), busy lifestyle, and so on. However, some researchers suggest that it is difficult to generalize the results of the previous researches because the influence of the factor varies depending on purchase situation, product category, and the characteristics of consumers (Heo, 2011; Carrington et al., 2014; Hamm and Gronefeld, 2004; Vermeir and Verbeke, 2006). Nevertheless, the increasing number of empirical researches on ethical consumption shows that ethical consumption becomes important research theme(Bray et al.,2011; Carrington et al.,2014; Castaldo et al.,2009; Nicholls, 2002; Nicholls, 2004; Padel and Foster, 2005; Yin et al.,2010; Yong et al., 2010). However, the research about the relationship between intention and behavior of ethical consumption as well as other empirical research about ethical consumption is not enough yet. 2.1.1. attitude-behavior gap of ethical decision-making process Ethical consumption gap includes the all types of gap occurring in the decision making process. Papaoikonomou et al.(2011) divided decision-making process of ethical consumption into stimulus, knowledge, attitudes, and behavior, and explained the three gaps that occur between each stages as a holistic approach (Figure 1). They named the gaps as 'receiving information', 'processing information and forming attitudes', and 'taking action', and also presented the impeding factors for each gaps. Processing Information and forming attitudes Receiving Information Taking action Stimulus Knowledge Attitudes Behavior Figure 1. The attitudes-behavior gap in ethical consumer decision making (Papaoikonomou et al., 2011) The three gaps suggested in Figure 1 are re-segmented into perceive gap, attitude gap, and purchase gap for this study (Table 1). The definition and cause factors from previous research were suggested in Table 1. For example, the “take action” has a similar meaning to the purchase gap which is the main subject of this study. Among three